Much has changed for LGBTQ in legal terms but - for now- social challenges may stay.

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Harish V Nair

New Delhi

September 7, 2018

UPDATED: September 7, 2018 07:17 IST

Members of LGBTQ community celebrate at Jantar Mantar on Thursday. (Photo: Pankaj Nangia)

HIGHLIGHTS

Gay sex among consenting adults is no longer a crime

I am what I am, so take me as I am: CJI Misra

No one can escape from their individuality, he added

Gay sex among consenting adults is no longer a crime, the Supreme Court said on Thursday, in a landmark judgment that was aptly summed up by the CJI, Dipak Misra, by two iconic quotes.

Not for nothing, the great German thinker, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had said "I am what I am, so take me as I am," the top judge said while starting to read out a 493-page judgment.

Set to retire on October 2, CJI Misra quoted another German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who had said, "No one can escape from their individuality."

He said there cannot be discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Section 377 of the IPC, in so far as it criminalises consensual sexual conduct among adults of the same sex, is unconstitutional, the CJI read out.

It was the moment members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community and activists were waiting for. They broke into celebration, some hugging each other inside the jam-packed courtroom.

The Supreme Court itself had re-criminalised gay sex in December 2013, four years after the Delhi High Court had legalised it. The CJI and Justices DY Chandrachud, Rohinton Nariman and Indu Malhotra wrote separate but concurring judgments. They read out the operative portion of their verdicts, reading down the 157-year-old section in the open court.

The LGBTQ community cheered when CJI Misra said "change mentality, bid adieu to prejudice", and also when Justice Nariman questioned how "being a gay can be treated as a mental disorder".

Justice Chandrachud's remark that section 377 had become a weapon for blackmail and Justice Malhotra's "history owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries" was equally lapped up.

The court was disposing of petitions filed by 32 individuals, including celebrities, IITians and activists. The legalising of gay sex among consenting adults was a foregone conclusion after the court, in its another landmark judgment, declared the right to privacy as a fundamental right in August 2017 and ruled that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is deeply offensive to one's dignity.